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Massive Industries

Published on October 01, 2004.

8massiveindustries.tv

Visual effects artist Chris Staves spent more than a decade honing the work of directing greats like Gore Verbinski, Mark Romanek and Michel Gondry, as a lead artist/co-founder of Santa Monica-based effects powerhouse Method Studios, where he worked on countless music videos as well as films like One Hour Photo, The Ring and The Pirates of the Caribbean. But just three months ago, the Glendale, CA native uprooted to New York City to launch Massive Industries with executive producer Justin Lane, another Method alum. So what are a pair of effects guys doing in a design report? Well, it turns out Massive has partnered with the motion graphic hipsters at Psyop, to turn out what could possibly be a truly fresh offering to the market-design-driven effects. "Psyop has an extremely strong reputation for creating leading edge, fantastically creative graphic-design driven spots," Staves notes. "My experience is strongly rooted in photo-real, seamless visual effects. The idea behind Massive and the concept that initially drew me to the collaboration is to combine the two disciplines of our backgrounds to create something that I don't think has really been done before."

"The line between design and visual effects continues to blur and we are currently standing right on that line," adds partner Lane. "Based on what we've seen in the past few years, projects are more and more requiring a design element as well as visual effects approach to the work. Our hope is to have the ability, when necessary, to deliver both." Even prior to Massive's official launch, Staves had teamed with Psyop on a Marshall's rebranding campaign for Hill/Holliday. He helped to integrate the designers' fully-created backgrounds and treatments on live action elements, shot by Believe's Carolyn Chen, turning out a series of shoppers existing in a completely graphic world. More recently, Massive and the Psyop designers partnered to create a non-threatening fully animated spider, halfway "between Toy Story and photo-real," notes Lane, for an American Stock Exchange campaign. Next up is a spot for AOL out of BBDO/N.Y. and a Honda-RVB project for Grip Limited, Toronto.